[Mate 8 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] loudog3114:
Four things have made it a done deal for me;

1 - Screen/Camera are well within the spectrum of 'good enough'

2 - A native, very quickly accessible, one hand mode

3 - The BATTERY LIFE. I am at 6.5 hours of screen on time with 23% left, while being unplugged for almost 48 hours.

4 - The Performance. There is something very pleasing to know that my device is currently #1 in the antutu benchmarks.

BUT, there are caveats, and here are my "must do's" to make this a damn near perfect device;

You absolutely have to flash the international version of the ROM if you bought the Chinese version. Unless you are Chinese and/or in China, the Chinese version of the ROM is full of Chinese-only language modifications. Also, the Chinese version has a permissions blocker built in that will make life a living hell.

Install a third party launcher. Google Now Launcher and Nova are good options. Personally, I don't mind having no app drawer, but my issue is more so with the icon layout. In a screen this large, the icon layout should be at least 6x6, and the native launcher will not go that high.

Use the "Smart" power plan, under settings, advanced settings, battery manager. Then, white list apps that you want to run while screen off, by adding them to "protected apps".

Under settings/display, set the view mode to "small". This is a personal preference. I don't buy a large screen device so everything is bigger, I buy them because I want more screen real estate. That option effectively lowers the DPI giving you exactly that, more real estate.

Schedule power off and on times. This is also a huge feature for those trying to save battery life. I have mine set to power off at 12am and on at 7am. Though you should only lose about 5% at night anyway, gaining that 5-10, even 15% back over the course of 3 days makes a difference.

Add the floating dock button to you quick settings drag down. This is similar to PIE controls found in custom roms or xposed modules, except the button stays on screen. Very useful for one handed operation on a 6" device.

Enable the one hand UI and use it. So far this is the best native implementation of a one-handed mode that I have seen in an android device. Why stock android doesnt include one yet is beyond me. But this is about as quick and simple as it is on the iphone... just swipe the nav bar right or left to shrink the contents of the screen to the right or left side (a-la samsungs one hand mode, just with a better gesture).

Configure the double-tap-volume down button to snap a picture in the camera settings. It won't be the best focused picture in the world, but its very useful and if the picture sucks, you can just take another one.

This is obvious, but use the finger print reader. It is the best one I have found on an android device yet (I beleive it is the same as the 6P). Very, very quick and touching it unlocks the device without the use of a power button. Also, enable the finger print reader snapshot feature for selfies in the camera.

The only real down side I have found to this device is that permissions can still be a bit annoying, even with the international ROM. It seems to block permissions that I never got prompted to allow or block, and I have had to manually go into the permissions section of the settings app and allow permissions that I was never prompted for. One other frustration is that, even with the sort of odd SoC configuration they sued, you still can't use "Ok Google" from screen off. Other than that, the device is fantastic, even with the EMUI skinning (I actually like the notifications panel on it). Some of the "Smart assistance" features are nonsense (knuckle stuff? come on), but they don't have much of an impact on the user experience... especially since you won't use most of them.